WAKING UP IN TOYTOWN

With wit precision and grace John Burnside s second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood With a new introduction by Sarah Perry Among the best writers of his generation fully voiced and perfectly pitched Andrew O HaganIn the early 80s after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a Surbiton of the mind But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined and he relapses into chaos He encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark an old lover with whom he reprises a troubled masochistic relationship and finally the seemingly flesh and blood embodiments of all his private phantoms as he drifts further into unreality The second of John Burnside s extraordinary trilogy of memoirs Waking Up in Toytown is the story of one man s search for sanity but also the story of love that outgrows its restraints and a scorching enquiry into the soul from one of our greatest contemporary writers Burnside s memoir deserves to become a classic Has anyone written about the direct experience of mental illness with such scrupulous observation and wit Daily Express